Solutions30 cuts French telecom contract to reset margin profile
Solutions30 SE has reported first-half 2026 revenue of €400.3 million, an 11.1% decline on a restated comparative basis, as the company pushes through the final stage of a two-year portfolio restructuring. The dominant driver of the fall is the accelerated wind-down of a major framework contract in the French telecommunications market, a deal that generated €117.6 million in revenue in 2025 but was loss-making throughout.
Adjusted EBITDA fell 46.3% to €17.0 million, leaving a margin of 4.2%, down 280 basis points year on year. Net loss attributable to the group widened to €24.5 million from €16.8 million in the first half of 2025. Net bank debt rose to €67.1 million at the end of June 2026, up from €36.3 million at the end of December 2025, reflecting restructuring cash outflows and a €16 million reduction in the use of the group's factoring programme.
The deal and its rationale
Chief executive Gianbeppi Fortis confirmed that the exit from the French telecoms contract, formally announced on 3 August 2026, will be completed by the end of this year. "The exit from this business and the associated restructuring will be completed by the end of 2026," he said. "Starting in 2027, Solutions30 will have a smaller but more focused scope, one that is significantly more profitable."
The French segment posted an adjusted EBITDA of €-1.2 million in the half, a margin of -1.0%, against a positive 4.5% a year earlier. Germany also weighed on results: the group is shifting its customer base away from FiberCo investors toward incumbent carriers Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, incurring one-off transition costs that pushed the German adjusted EBITDA margin to -1.9%. Management says all German restructuring charges have now been recognised and expects a material margin recovery in the second half.
The bright spots are Benelux, the group's largest segment at 42% of revenue, which maintained a double-digit adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.2%, and the Other Countries segment, where a refocus on energy services drove a 60-basis-point margin improvement to 7.1%.
The company has also flagged uncertainty around short-term financing. As of the publication date, discussions with banking partners to reinforce existing credit facilities had not concluded, leaving the level of short-term financing unresolved. Management expects those talks to reach a conclusion within weeks.
Market context
Solutions30 operates in the field-services layer of digital and energy infrastructure: deploying fibre, maintaining low-voltage grids and building out solar and EV-charging networks on behalf of network owners and utilities. That positioning places it at the intersection of two structural trends in European technology policy: the EU's continued push for ubiquitous fibre broadband and the energy-transition investment cycle stimulated by the RePowerEU programme.
The company's pivot away from French telecoms connectivity and toward energy services mirrors a wider pattern among European field-services and managed-services providers, many of which are renegotiating legacy telecom-deployment contracts as fibre rollout matures in core markets and margin pressure intensifies. In Germany, the shift from FiberCo-led deployment to incumbent-carrier contracts reflects a documented tightening of the FiberCo investor universe, where several well-funded infrastructure funds have slowed commitments amid rising interest rates.
Solutions30 has flagged data-centre services and satellite broadband among its target growth verticals for the post-2026 period, both of which carry higher technical complexity and, in principle, better margin potential than mass-market fibre rollout. The group's network of more than 16,000 technicians across nine European countries is the primary competitive asset it will redeploy into these segments.
Outlook
Full-year guidance is qualitative rather than quantitative. Management expects the French exit to be complete by 31 December 2026, German margins to recover in the second half, and the group to enter 2027 with a structurally lower but more profitable revenue base. A strategy webinar is planned for early October 2026, and third-quarter revenue is scheduled for release on 5 November 2026, both of which should give investors firmer visibility on the 2027 trajectory.